Political
correctness embraces a vocal, compulsory anti-racism, defined as opposition
to the racism of white people. Another type is the campaign against anti-Semitism.
It is an expression of late-blooming Jewish religious culture, focusing upon
the negative experience of the Holocaust.

I
once saw a documentary film titled the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and attended a panel discussion which followed its showing at the University
of Minnesota on January 8, 2006. The documentary was made by Marc Levin, a
Jew who nevertheless approached the subject of anti-Semitism in a relatively
balanced way. The Protocols are a notorious document produced
more than a century ago in Czarist Russia purporting to show a Jewish conspiracy
to control the world.

I
came to the showing with a Jewish friend who possesses a copy of the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion. For him, I think, this book is half humor and half
political pornography, both stimulating in their own way. I share much of
his attitude but not to the extent of a total debunking of so-called anti-Semitic
thought. While the allegation of a secretive international organization of
the kind described in the Protocols may be fictitious, something
like a Jewish conspiracy is, I think, very much alive. To paraphrase
Bill Clinton, it depends on how you define the words Jewish and
conspiracy.

Marc
Levins film began with the accusation that Jews working in the World
Trade Center had advance warning of the attacks on September 11th, which would
imply that pro-Jewish groups planned and carried out the attacks. A related
charge was that a group of Israelis were seen laughing and videotaping the
scene from a rooftop across the Hudson River while the twin towers were in
flames. The film fails to make clear who originated the rumor that Jews evacuated
the World Trade Center en masse prior to the attacks. It does identify a group
of Israelis with video equipment who taped the smoking towers; but that does
not prove that these people were connected with the attack. The end of the
documentary focuses on Jews who were killed in the September 11th attacks.

Marc
Levin interviews a number of anti-Semitic individuals ranging from the publisher
of a Palestinian newspaper to a distributor of white-supremacist literature
to young blacks on street corners in New York who believed in the Protocols.
I give these anti-Semites high marks for being open with Levin; and Levin
high marks for not editing the tapes to make the interviewees look ridiculous.
From the ending, its clear where Levins sympathies lie. Even so,
the film was relatively fair.

Then
came the panel discussion featuring two persons, both Jewish. One was a young
French man on the University faculty. The other was a woman who represented
the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. After
brief remarks by each panel member, the event was structured as a question-and-answer
session. I was hoping that the discussion would be conducted in the spirit
of free inquiry, as Levins film was, and the question of anti-Semitism
would be considered to have at least two sides. Instead, it was a one-sided
discussion of the dangers of anti-Semitism in its various new forms. No one
said anything remotely challenging the orthodox view with the exception of
the French panel member who admitted to some discomfort at European laws which
made speech by Holocaust-deniers a crime.

In
that environment, I stood up to express my own opinion. I noted that the film
had tried to investigate alleged Jewish influence in Hollywood. Levin had
contacted Norman Lear and some other prominent Jews for comment about Jewish
influence in the film industry; but they all were unavailable for an interview.
My question was: What is your response to allegations of Jewish influence
in the media and in Hollywood? Do you acknowledge that there is a Jewish
conspiracy in this industry or do you think that there are no Jewish
conspiracies anywhere?

The
Frenchman responded by saying that he was Jewish and he had never witnessed
any type of conspiratorial activities himself. The Community Council representative
said that, while many Jews worked in the media and in Hollywood, that fact
did not reflect a conspiracy but was instead a manifestation of career opportunities
available to all in our country based upon merit. No, she did not believe
in Jewish conspiracies. I wanted to ask a follow-up question but
was not recognized for that purpose.

I
do, however, think there is such a thing as a Jewish conspiracy
- maybe not the kind described in the Protocols but a conspiracy nonetheless.
Back to Bill Clintons mode of argument. What is a conspiracy?
What is a Jewish conspiracy?

A
conspiracy is two or more people conferring and acting in private to achieve
some end. Its elements are: (1) There must be more than one person deciding
to do something. The conversation should be directed toward purposeful action.
(2) Those engaged in the conversation do not make their activities known.
In other words, an action takes place without the public being aware who the
instigators are or what is their plan.

What
is a Jewish conspiracy? I do not think it is simply a conspiracy in which
one or more Jews are involved. Rather, it is a conspiracy involving Jews which
advances a Jewish agenda. By that definition, Jack Ruby may have
been Jewish and he may have been part of a conspiracy, but he was not necessarily
part of a Jewish conspiracy.

What
is a Jewish agenda? Are Jews a monolithic group whose individual
members all think the same? Of course not. Even so, there are instances of
Jews acting in concert to promote or oppose certain things. If these actions
are the result of undisclosed conversations, they might reasonably be called
a conspiracy.

Let
me give an example. During the panel discussion, the representative of the
Jewish Community Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas said that her organization,
along with sympathetic groups on campus, had managed to kill a proposal that
the University of Minnesota should get rid of its investments in Israel. To
the extent that the operation was carried out in secret and involved several
different individuals or groups, it could reasonably be called a conspiracy
- a Jewish conspiracy at that.

My
question involved conspiracies in Hollywood and in the media. What I know
is that I have seldom, if ever, seen Jews presented in a harshly derogative
way on television or in Hollywood films. Shakespeare was able to create a
Shylock, demanding his pound of flesh from delinquent debtors;
but such a character is scarce in todays cultural environment. I have
seen WASP businessmen or white sheriffs from small towns in segregation-era
southern states presented as villains. I have seen various anti-Semites depicted
in villainous roles. The fact that positive and negative roles are distributed
so unevenly in films leads me to think that some kind of coordination is at
work in the entertainment industry.

The
1930s film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, presented a likable,
homespun character, played by Jimmy Stewart, participating in the democratic
process. He was a thoroughly positive character from a mainstream American
point of view. There is a scene in the film in which Mr. Smith addresses a
rally of his supporters. In the back of the crowd a man wearing with a yarmulke
- a Jew - stands next to a black man as they both applaud the homespun hero.
Was that an accident? Would Hollywood producers, then or now, have allowed
a brown-shirted man wearing a swastika arm-band to be placed in the back of
the crowd applauding Mr. Smith. I am reasonably sure that such
a character will never receive sympathetic treatment in Hollywood.

Today
we know that corporations pay big money to place brand-name products in Hollywood
films. Was not the placement of the stereotypical Jew and the black in the
film about Mr. Smith an early example of religious or racial branding,
saying to Americans, both black and white, that Jews were their friend? Here
is where Jewish influence in Hollywood becomes an issue. At the
least, the fact that the U.S. film industry is disproportionately staffed
with Jews might suggest a buddy system that gives preference in hiring and
promotion along religious lines. It rises to the level of a conspiracy when
decisions are made to promote political or social agendas through the stereotypical
characters appearing in the films.

Well,
one might say, what of it? This is only entertainment. Dont try to read
serious agendas into light-hearted films. I contend, however, that the line
dividing entertainment and political discourse is increasingly blurred. Weaned
on television, todays generation of young people have limited critical
skills. Television commercials create the notion that certain products are
good. Through repetition of an image, the branding process takes place. Commercial
products and political candidates are sold this way. So is the idea, gained
from watching television dramas and sitcoms, that certain types of people
are good while others are bad. Entertainment is, in a real sense, serious
business; and whoever controls the entertainment industry possesses real political
power.

In
the television age, political controversy and discussion have shifted from
economic issues to the grievances of particular groups of people. Blacks have
grievances resulting from slavery and segregation. Jews have grievances resulting
from Nazi persecution. Women have grievances from having historically been
relegated to an inferior place in society. Here is where Hollywood,
repetitiously playing on stereotypes, is able to influence political opinion.
The problem is that, unlike food products which put the ingredients on the
label, the consumers of entertainment have little idea of how its product
was made. Did some writers or producers of a television mini-series consciously
decide to present certain types of characters in a certain moral light? If
so, who were the people who created these images? What, if any, was their
social or political agenda? One will never know.

If
it seems far-fetched to suppose that creative individuals would try to slip
a political message into a motion picture or television drama, consider this
historical precedent: The Communist party once sought to influence the content
of Hollywood films. Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild,
was converted from being a political liberal to a political conservative in
the process of opposing these people. We know that he considered them to be
quite ruthless. The history of this period is told in a book, Red Star
over Hollywood, by Ronald and Allis Radosh.

Ironically,
some of the first Hollywood communists, Maurice Rapf and Budd Schulberg, were
sons of the Jewish moguls who ran Hollywood. Far from being a working-class
movement, there was a certain cultural chic to being a communist. There were
Stalinists and Trotskyites and others adhering to one or another party line.
Organized in cells, they were engaged in a conspiracy to advance their political
agenda through films. Public knowledge of this phenomenon focuses more upon
the crackdown: the blacklisted screenwriters, the House Un-American Activities
Committee, Joe McCarthy and his communist witch hunt. But a precedent may
have been created in these secretive political organizations for what we today
know as political correctness in the media.

As
it turned out Communism wouldnt fly. As a political agenda, it ran afoul
of the capitalistic power structure that controlled American society. As soon
as the political heat rose in the late 1940s, the Hollywood moguls caved in,
purging the industry of communists. In that period, however, the Communist
Party had reached out to disaffected black Americans, most notably Paul Robeson,
to try to expand its influence. Communists were active in the defense of the
Scottsboro Boys and in the Negro Liberation Movement.

This
had a better chance of success. Partly to blunt communist influence both at
home and abroad, the U.S. power structure embraced the black Civil Rights
movement so long as it was non-communist. A whole generation of Americans
who attended college in the 1950s and 1960s came of age politically supporting
civil rights. It is these people who today hold key positions in journalism,
education, politics and the law, exerting strong cultural influence.

I
would say that the Communists generally failed to persuade Americans through
Hollywood films to support their type of politics. People will not pay to
watch films that have a heavy political message; they want instead to be entertained.
The makers of films have better luck in shaping political attitudes by the
moral flavoring they give to certain types of characters. (See the discussion
above.) The news industry, both print and electronic, is better suited to
propagate a political message. So-called political correctness
is rampant here.

Journalists
themselves tell of lobbies (a.k.a. cadres) in the newsroom - blacks, feminist
women, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, Jews, and others - who actively put a
particular spin on the news. Political preferences can be expressed in a variety
of ways: by the choice of stories to cover, by the amount of space given to
the story, by the positioning on page one or an interior page, by follow-up
coverage or the lack thereof, by the choice of words in the headlines or in
the story itself. Much of this decisionmaking takes place under the cover
of editorial anonymity. Unlike motion pictures, for which audiences pay to
see certain productions, the consumers of news have little choice
of what messages they will receive. Either the message is free (as in the
case of television news) or it is included in a paid subscription for newspapers
supposed to be conveying general news.

Let
us return to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy. Certainly it would
not, if it exists, take the form of an all-powerful secretive organization
like the hypothetical elders behind the Protocols of Zion. Some
say that the Rothschild family, which is Jewish, controls international banking
and therefore the world economy. That unproven hypothesis will not be discussed
here. What will be discussed is the evident coordination of pressure in American
society, and to a lesser extent in Europe, to maintain or advance a Jewish
agenda. And what is that agenda? While Jews individually have various purposes,
there are certain issues that seem to enjoy undivided support within the Jewish
community.

First
and foremost would be the experience of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party, and
the Holocaust. This negative experience solidifies the Jewish community, both
from the standpoint of avoiding another such experience and of celebrating
the Jews own survival and resurrection as a people.

Related
to this is the concept of anti-Semitism, which means an attitude opposed to
the Jewish people or their interests. An anti-Semite could be, of course,
someone like Hitler who actively persecuted Jews. It could also be someone
who criticized Jews such as by alleging hidden Jewish influence or a Jewish
agenda at variance with the national interest; or someone who denied the Holocaust,
in total or in important aspects; or even someone who discussed Jewish people
in a negative way. Most Jews would, of course, be opposed to anti-Semitism
and to anti-Semites.

There
is a third core belief which commands weaker allegiance: support for the state
of Israel. Most American Jews support Israel with patriotic fervor, demanding
that the U.S. government ally itself closely with that nation and provide
material support. However, a significant minority of Jews, mainly on the political
left, criticize the Israeli government for its treatment of Palestinians and
its military aggression against neighboring Muslim countries. While right-wing
Jews generally equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, there are enough
critics of Israeli policy that such criticism has become politically acceptable.

The
question now becomes whether Jews or others advance this Jewish agenda
in ways that might be called a conspiracy. I would argue that
the existence of cadre within the communication media, education,
politics, entertainment, and other politically influential fields who actively
support this agenda behind the cloak of institutional anonymity are effectively
a conspiracy even if there is no coordinating agent. That is because the agenda,
for which support appears to be quite monolithic, is hidden. The promoters
and defenders of this agenda do not identify themselves as representatives
of the Jewish community but only as hired persons, who happen to be Jewish,
doing their job.

On
the other hand, there are also organizations which do put forth a public face
as Jewish organizations. These would include such groups as the America-Israel
Public Affairs Council, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Jewish Community
Relations Council of various states or localities. One could not accuse these
organizations of being a conspiracy because they do their work quite openly
as advocacy groups.

So
how does this work in the realm of practical politics? Consider an example.
In the early stages of the Iraq war, a Democratic Congressman from Virginia
named Jim Moran told an anti-war group that, in his opinion, the United States
would not have invaded Iraq had not the Jewish community supported the invasion.
Six Jewish members of Congress demanded his resignation for making that statement.
Moran was, in fact, removed as a regional leader for the Democrats in the
U.S. House of Representatives. The news media gave this event little coverage.
I saw a brief report in U.S. News & World Report, a news magazine
edited by a right-wing Jew, included with other information that suggested
Rep. Moran was a bit of a bumbler. This was relatively mild criticism; the
anti-Semitism theme was played down.

On
the other hand, persons such as Louis Farrakhan or David Duke, who have been
more outspoken about Jewish influence upon the U.S. decision to go to war
in Iraq, or the President of Iran, who said that European Jews had used the
Holocaust to justify occupying Palestine at the expense of the Arabs and held
a conference for Holocaust deniers, have been consistently demonized in the
press. And the American public generally accepts that, because those persons
have bad opinions, they are bad persons. They are anti-Semites
which means someone like Hitler.

Marketing
experts say it takes seven advertising messages to create an impulse to buy
commercial products. In a similar way, the branding process with respect to
the Jewish identity has thus borne fruit. Countless films and television dramas
about Nazis and Nazi-sympathizing anti-Semites, combined with educational
courses about the history of the Holocaust, the Holocaust Museum, Holocaust
Remembrance days, and public writings and speeches on the subject have created
an indelible association between anti-Semites
and the evil Nazis.In the public mind there is created a strong
impression that to be called an anti-Semite is to be judged to
be among the worst people on earth. Behind a possibly polite exterior, such
a person would jump at the chance to exterminate Jews in a concentration camp.
In other words, you need to watch these people closely - nip them in the bud.

This
dark Manichaean imperative not to criticize Jews as a group or challenge the
sacred beliefs of Jewish secular religion poses an intimidating
influence which interferes with the exercise of free thought and free speech.
But is this the result of a conspiracy? I think a case can be
made that it is not.

The
conspiracy aspect falls down, perhaps, on the element of secrecy.
Much of the pressure to conform to a religious or political party line is
quite in the open. We know instinctively that its dangerous to raise
certain subjects the wrong way. People can lose their jobs by saying certain
things. Individuals can be publicly humiliated. And people know this without
having to be told. A community taboo exists from long-standing custom.

There
is, as we said, both a hidden and open component of the Jewish community which
with great determination enforces a particular line of thought. The fact is,
however, that Jews are too small a part of the U.S. population to accomplish
this on their own. Two other factors should be mentioned.

First
would be the majority of non-Jews who are Christian. End-times fundamentalists
support Israel and the Jewish people because of prophecies in the Book of
Revelation and the statement in Genesis in which God says that whoever befriends
the Jews will be blessed. Christians of all denominations respect the Jewish
people because Jesus was a Jew and Christianity came out of the Judaic religious
tradition. The Christian church so provides the demographic muscle to support
the political agenda of present-day Jews.

Second
would be the historical circumstances preceding the current era. The worlds
people, including Americans, were truly shocked by the experience of the Holocaust,
by the anger and hate emanating from Nazi Germany, and the bloody world war
launched by Hitler. They had empathy for Jews who suffered so greatly under
that regime. Remembering the boat loads of wartime Jews whom no nation would
take, people also sympathized with the idea of a homeland for Jewish people.
Every group of people deserves a place to call home, and, for better or worse,
the state of Israel is that place for Jews.

Now,
however, the picture is complicated by the need of Palestinian people to have
their homeland, safe from Israeli exploitation and aggression. The American
people need to extricate themselves from a disastrous entanglement in Middle
Eastern politics so we can live in peace with all nations. Therefore, the
old formulations produced after World War II wont work anymore. We need
courage to face the new situation without prejudice. The question of a Jewish
conspiracy to enforce the political status quo is a legitimate part of that
needed discussion.

Thank
you, Marc Levin, for considering the subject in your documentary. It would
be well for us to be open and direct in our views.